Sometimes you enter an estate sale and are forced to put on the blue baggie shoe covers that surgeons wear because the house is so immaculate.  Most of the time, however, you wade around in knee-deep dust bunnies. Or worse. 

Messy houses hide the best treasures.  This is a fact.  There was one house that had huge reptile cages with shedded snake skin all over that Sarah had to immediately walk out of because of the smell.  I ended up persevering and risking the chance of hurling, and ended up finding a mint condition 1968 Detroit Free Press celebrating the Tigers’ world series win ($40 sold on eBay).  

On last week’s hunt we came across a house that had the greatest collection of paper goods I had ever seen.  The basement was literally covered with old magazines and newspapers, piled up on bookshelves and littering the floor entirely. My first thought was how great it was that there was never a fire in this house.  My second thought was that there had to be at LEAST one valuable magazine in this pile.  And so we dug.

Sarah had the best finds here, picking up a rare Disney World Life Magazine and some Little Golden books (see previous post.)  I dug and dug, but came up empty. There were several collectible mags and newspapers, but because of the storage conditions, they were all water damaged, crumpled, and moldy.  Bummers all around.

Upstairs in the less musty area, I did manage to find a ton of quilting magazines (again, mentioned in the previous post.)  I bought them for about 10 cents each. They currently have 4 watchers on eBay.  DUN DUN DUN.

-Erin

Update from Sarah: I thought that Ebony with Sidney Poitier on the cover might be valuable but don’t worry, it’s not.